Action Inside Ring Can Be Tame Compared With Craziness Outside

July 25, 1985|By Ray Didinger, Special to The Sentinel

Paul Orndorff, better known as Mr. Wonderful, took a frightful beating at the Catholic Youth Center in Scranton, Pa., in April 1984.

He was punched, then kicked in the groin. While he was doubled over, Orndorff was smashed on the head with a folding chair. Ordinarily, this sounds like just another day's work on the wrestling circuit.

What makes this incident noteworthy is that it took place outside the ring, and it was the spectators doing the dirty work.

What's more, the fans were doing it for real. The punches were real, the kick was real and the metal chair, most assuredly, was real. Mr. Wonderful could tell the difference right away.

Orndorff, a 6-foot-3 260-pounder, took a blind swing at his assailants, missed and hit an 81-year-old bystander. The victim, Elmer Biemueller, sustained three broken false teeth, a broken nose and a fractured bone near his eye.

Biemueller was hospitalized, and Orndorff was charged with aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person.

Who were these fans who jumped Paul Orndorff, and why would they lose control that way? Okay, Orndorff is a villain -- he prances a lot and does sneaky things to his opponents -- but, really, a kick in the groin? Wouldn't a simple ''Boo'' suffice?

Wrestling, it seems, stirs a unique and volatile passion in its audience. There is something about this ''sport'' that turns otherwise normal people -- students, teachers, laborers -- into raging wackos.

Not all of them, mind you. Many people come to the matches knowing it is burlesque in rhinestones and tights. They keep things in perspective.

It is the other element, the fans who identify too strongly with what's happening on stage, that makes the security guards -- and the wrestlers -- squirm.

Two years ago, a fan knocked down an Atlanta police officer and climbed into the ring with a knife. He was subdued before he could do any damage.

The fan's wife came to the police station in tears. She asked him how he could do such a stupid thing. The man was a quiet, suburban type without so much as a traffic ticket in his past.

He replied, ''Didn't you see what was happening? It was two against one. Somebody had to even it up.''

Tully Blanchard was standing in a hallway outside the Greenville (S.C.) Coliseum, listening to the roar of the sellout crowd.

Blanchard wasn't wrestling that night. He came in to tape a TV interview with Ricky Steamboat. The two exchanged insults and threats, then walked away smiling.

As Blanchard left the set, fans threw paper cups at his head. Tully, you see, is a bad guy. Last year, he snuck up on Steamboat and cracked him with a chair. Wrestling fans don't forget things like that.

''That's the name of the game -- you've got to give 'em color,'' said Blanchard, a former quarterback at West Texas State. ''These people aren't here to see a sport. This is showtime, Honky Tonk, USA.

''Last year, they put on a couple full-contact karate matches before us. The people sat there like this bored. Then we came out kicking and body- slamming and the place went nuts.

''Yeah, they hate me but so what? It's all money in the bank. I don't mind when they yell things, I just don't like it when they stab me. An old lady got me with a nail file in Laredo Texas. A man crushed out a cigarette on my back in Richmond Va..

''You can only take so much. In Corpus Christi Texas, a guy hit me and I shoved him down. Somdbody behind me kicked him in the face, now I'm on trial for assault. I could spend a year in jail. Do you believe that bull . . . ?'' Other wrestlers have similar stories. Killer Kowalski was hit with a chair on his way to the ring. Hans Schroeder was hit with a brick (a lady had it in her handbag). Schroeder's wife, Pat, also a wrestler (Leilani Kai), was struck with a bottle.

Maurice ''Mad Dog'' Vachon recalls an old lady attacking him with an umbrella. Vachon's brother had his throat slashed, ear-to-ear, by a 75-year- old man.

''You try to be polite,'' Vachon pointed out, ''but these people make you rude.''

What is behind this rage? Why is it that fans at other sports are content to vent their displeasure vocally?

''Spectators relate to the action on more of a gut level here than they do at, say, baseball or football,'' said Bruce Robertson, 37, a clinical social worker and graduate student at Bryn Mawr (Pa.) College.

''This is a sport, yes, but it taps into an entirely different emotion,'' Robertson said. ''In baseball, you have the home team and the visitors. In wrestling, you have the good guys and bad guys. And the bad guys are really bad. It's like a John Wayne movie.

''Look at the characters. We have Sgt. Slaughter, the U.S. Marine, against The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. The Sheik is from Iran, the nation that humiliated us in front of the whole world. Volkoff is from Russia, the nuclear power that scares the hell out of us.